


Shared Life Experiences

by FloriaTosca



Series: Self-Indulgent Post AoU Gen 'verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Deadpool (2016), Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky is so moe that even heroic comedic sociopaths are nice to him, Female Gaze, First Meetings, Gen, Identity Issues, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Violence, Not As Dark As The Tags Make It Sound, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Other, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Deadpool (2016), Swearing, Wade Wilson Breaking the Fourth Wall, background Wanda/Vanessa, body image issues, bucky's post-tws revenge tour, deadpool's love of mexican food, female deadpool, racebent character, references to canonical past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6172219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While exploring an abandoned HYDRA facility, the man formerly known as the Winter Soldier (and Bucky Barnes before that) makes a new friend.  Not that he had much choice in the matter.  Wanda Wilson is a very persistent woman.  Alternatively: Wanda Wilson meets a stray puppy who happens to be a nonagenarian cyborg assassin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Life Experiences

**Author's Note:**

> Wanda Wilson is not the Lady Deadpool from the comics. She's mostly a genderswap of movie!Wade with a few other influences and alterations to make her fit into a more MCU-based universe. She's also Sam Wilson's cousin.

So no shit, there I was, hanging out in the rafters of some dilapidated rent-a-lair in unincorporated Pierce County, wondering what the ever-loving _Hell_ I, Wanda Winona Wilson, had done to deserve getting stuck in a Teen-rated story.

[ _You tell problematic jokes and make blind old ladies assemble your Ikea furniture. And you kill people._ ]

“Everybody except Daredevil kills people in this universe! Fuzzy little raccoons kill people! Cute legal secretaries kill people! Even Captain America kills people! And speaking of Captain America, that joke about Loki’s fashion sense in _Avengers_ was _extremely_ insensitive to polytheists and the cape enthusiast community.” I wiggle into a more comfortable position on the beam and sulk a little at the prospect of a foreseeable future where I can only kill people offscreen or inexplicably bloodlessly - sure, like that’s a reasonable expectation when you’re using _katanas_ \- only get one f-word per story, and worst of all, will not be participating in any themed sex montages.

[ _Stretching your limits builds character_.]

So Piotr Rasputin writes fanfiction now? Oh joy. “Y’know,” I say, “If you just wanted a family-friendly quip ninja, why not bring in Spider-Man? Being a hilarious murderhobo is kind of my schtick, here.”

[ _You’ll find out soon enough_.]

Now I’m about to start arguing with the Voice for pulling that kind of enigmatic mysterious-mentor bullshit, but then the air gets ten degrees cooler and the background music switches to some ominous-ass scraped-metal industrial shit and my last functioning scraps of common sense tell me to shut my trap. Then Mystery Man walks in.

White guy, long dark hair, scruffy beard, wearing dark clothes with goggles and a tac vest, no insignia, tall and built but in a normal-person way not a Colossus way, maybe early thirties? That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that the left sleeve of his jacket’s been cut off to reveal what’s either some kind of elaborate full-length metal gauntlet or a really fancy prosthetic and he moves like absolute sex and murder. Heavy on the murder. _Really_ heavy on the murder - seriously, the guy’s armed to the teeth for someone breaking into what’s supposed to be an empty building. Oh fu- _crap_. What does he know that I don’t?

So I keep trailing him through the rafters - seriously, for an Evil Lair this place is ridiculously infiltrator-friendly, it’s like the architects were taking kickbacks from a ninja clan when they designed it or something. No hidden security bots jump out at him and he doesn’t trigger any old laser traps. It’d be dull as a pot metal butter knife if he didn’t have such a cute butt. Eventually Mystery Man murderstruts his way to a blank wall, touches some kind of hidden panel, and reveals a f- _goddamn_ elevator. Looks like I’ve learned as much as I’m gonna learn from skulking around. Let’s dance.

“Hey sailor!” I call out cheerfully as I fling myself down from the rafters and manage to land in a way that looks sorta cool. 

Everything’s kind of a blur after that. Mostly from lack of oxygen. Okay, I’d expected the guy to attempt some kind of counter-attack. You don’t bring that many knives just to do urban exploration unless the building has one _hell_ of a ROUS problem. But I hadn’t expected a large muscular man with a heavy-looking artificial limb to move that damn fast. One moment I’m standing there in a badass pose while the hairline fractures in my ankle bones knit, and the next I’m flat on my back with a metal hand around my throat and those beautiful, beautiful thighs pinning me to the ground. Maybe it’s just the vaseline-on-the-lens blur from borderline asphyxiation, but Mystery Man’s pretty cute up close.

Now I hate grapple checks as much as the next DEX-based fighter, but I can handle myself in them, and through maximum effort and a lot of undignified wriggling that would’ve been sexy under other circumstances, I get my arm un-pinned, grab one of this asshole’s knives, and hold it to _his_ femoral artery. And for a moment we’re just looking at each other like a couple of idiots in some spaghetti western ripoff, before he flings me across the room and pulls one of his handguns. But I manage to snatch off his goggles on the way, and dammit, Mystery Man is cute even when I can breathe. Mystery Man points his gun at me and glowers, which would be more intimidating if he didn’t have eyes like a husky puppy’s. The goggles were a solid choice, bro. “Who the hell are you?”

“Funny, I could ask you the same thing. The name’s Pool. Dead Pool.” He looks at me blankly. “Mercenary and psychotic pixie dream girl. I came here looking for information related to - let’s call it a personal project.”

“James Buchanan Barnes. Former occupation: asset. Current occupation: ghost,” he recites. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Pool.”

Holy shit. Now, I’m not the world’s best detective - whatever kind of ADHD Sherlock Holmes has in the Guy Ritchie movies, I’ve got the _other_ kind - but sometimes things just fall into place. This is the final I-block in my mental game of conspiracy-theory Tetris. I’m not talking to just any doe-eyed metal-armed murderhobo, I’m talking to THE doe-eyed metal-armed murderhobo.

“Ohmigod!” I say. Mystery Man - Barnes - looks at me funny. “If you are who I think you are, we are totally mad science human rights abuse cousins!”

“The hell.”

“It makes no sense for the Workshop to be the only setup like that out there. Everybody wants super soldiers nowadays. They told me they were trying to make Canadian Captain America. Which I really should’ve been more suspicious about. There’s already a Canadian Captain America and he has a deaf wolfdog. Maybe they were really aiming to turn me into someone like you. _Winter Soldier_.” Barnes brings his gun back up and glares at me. “Hey, I’m not gonna hold it against you. We all make dubious career moves at some point, and you at least have the excuse of being brainwashed. Besides, us heavily armed abominations of science should have each other’s backs.”

“The people who experimented on you. Were they HYDRA?” Barnes asks. He hasn’t put the gun _away_ yet, but he’s no longer actively looking to shoot me. We’re gonna be BFFs, I just know it!

“That’s what I’d like to know. It doesn’t seem like Francis’s style, but modern HYDRA’s got its tentacles in an awful lot of pies.”

“Who is Francis?”

“More like who WAS Francis. I killed him pretty thoroughly. Francis was a psychopathic British mad scientist with chiseled cheekbones and a weird complex about his birth name. You might’ve known him as Ajax.”

Barnes shakes his head. “Never met him. I think.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much. He was a DICK. What’re you doing out here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be in New York with all the other superheroes?” 

“I’m not a superhero,” Barnes says. Buddy, I know the feeling. “I don’t know _what_ I am. But I was deployed in Seattle in the early nineties. They kept me here when I wasn’t in the field. I had to come back. Finish things.” 

“I totally support that. Revenge therapy is my favorite kind.” Way more fun than talking to overworked school counselors whose biggest concern was whether my shitty homelife was shitty enough that they were legally obliged to contact protective services. Barnes just looks at me blankly again. Poor guy, all that mind control must have fried his brain or something. Then he shakes his head, flips up another hidden panel on the wall, and hits the down button. I follow him into the elevator. He doesn’t try to throw me out. We’re bonding!

Things are going so well that I can’t help but burst into song. “ _I fly like paper, get high like planes, if you catch me at the border I’ve got visas in my name, if you come around here, I make ‘em all day, I get one down in a second if you wait…_ ” Barnes is looking at me funny again. “Whoops!” I stage-whisper. “Was this supposed to be a stealth mission?”

“No point. If anybody’s down there they would have noticed the elevator being activated.”

Well that simplifies things. I start singing again. “ _Sometimes I think sitting on trains, every step I get to I’m clocking that game, everyone’s a winner, we’re making our fame, bonafide hustler making my name. All I wanna do is-_ ” and the elevator finally stops. Barnes and I look at each other. He puts his goggles back on and pulls out a gun, I get out Bea and Arthur. We both huddle up against the side walls of the elevator so we’re out of the immediate line of fire. The doors open to reveal-

Jack. And. Shit. A big barren rectangular concrete room, covered in dust and lit only by the dull glow of emergency lighting and exit signs. The only furnishings are two long tables holding rows of early-2000s desktop computers. Barnes takes point, and after shining a flashlight under the tables to check for lurking HYDRA tech support ninjas, he doesn’t show much interest in the contents of the room itself. Barnes just murderstruts down to a wall at the far end, opens another damn hidden panel, and holds up his metal hand in front of some kind of scanner. A door slides open, and this room is a lot more interesting.

The lighting’s better in here, but still not great, so everything has these dramatic German Expressionist “Holy Tim Burton, Batman!” shadows that make the whole place look a lot more exciting than it probably deserves. There are a couple computers, lots of cabinets, and right in the center of the room, flanked by a rolling tray holding some medical equipment and an IV stand, some kind of creepy-ass BDSM dentist’s chair. It’s not hard to see what has Barnes’s attention. I thought he looked pissed before, but it turns out that was just his resting murder face. When he looks at the chair you get the real deal. I don’t know the specifics of what they did to him in that thing, but as a veteran of the Mengele Mambo myself, I can think of a few ideas.

Barnes picks up the IV pole, calmly and silently snaps off the hooks and legs with his metal hand, then grabs the pole in both hands like a baseball bat and starts going all Bear Jew on the chair with it. The pole breaks before the chair does. Not surprising, since that thing was made to restrain someone who could go toe-to-toe with Captain America. Barnes catches his breath and for the first time since we entered the room, seems to remember I’m there. “You should go do what you came for, Miss Pool,” he says. “I think this is gonna take a while.”

I’ve been nothing but friendly to the guy and he doesn’t even invite me to the smashing-up-torture-devices party? RUDE! 

[ _Be fair. If this was you at the Workshop, would you want someone else butting in?_ ]

“Shut up, you,” I grumble. Barnes is still occupied tearing up some kind of evil-looking headrest thing he ripped off the top of the chair and doesn’t seem to hear me. The power strip is still here, and doesn’t look like it’s rigged to explode, so I get everything plugged in and turn on the computers. Which, of course, are ten years behind on updates. So I start rummaging through the cupboards while I wait.

I do not find any files helpfully labeled “Minutes for Meetings of the International Evil Scientists Club, 1990-2014” or a handy list of everyone’s computer passwords. But I do find a hidden compartment holding a half-bottle of Fernet-Branca and a dice bag of Krugerrands, a different hidden compartment with a bottle of birthday cake vodka and a snack baggie of uncut gemstones, some kind of experimental tranquilizer pistol, a box of Darth Vader bandaids, two mechanical pencils, a can of Ajax (ha!), and a wrench. I helpfully toss the wrench to Barnes. Well, I toss it in his general direction. Okay, I kinda throw it at him, but the man has a metal arm and super-reflexes. He can handle it!

Barnes catches the wrench almost automatically and starts going to town on the chair with it, but the interruption seems to jolt something loose in that fried brain of his. After he’s bashed the headset to scraps he comes out of that weird chair-destroying fugue and starts to notice me and the rest of the room. Including my haul. “Hey, sugar,” he says. His voice is… different, somehow. It’s the same guy - there’s no freaky possession shit going on. But his cadence is a lot less flat and his accent is a little more old-timey. “What’s it take for a guy to get a drink around here?”

“Nothing, if you like bitter cocktail-snob shit or sweet sorority-girl shit.”

“Miss Pool, I haven’t had a drink since the end of the Cold War. I ain’t picky. Hand over the hooch.”

How can I say no to that? I hand him the Fernet. Barnes drinks a long swig right out of the bottle and makes the most hilariously betrayed face I have ever seen. He looks like a cross between a cat being bathed and a baby eating a slice of lemon for the first time. It’s great. But before I can get my phone out and immortalize the moment, the asshole has to chase the Fernet with a slug of the vodka and ruin _everything_.

Before I can tell Barnes how very disappointed in him I am, the computers _finally_ boot up. “High goddamn time.” So I get to the login screen and dammit, they actually want a password, and they don’t even have a hint question. “Dammit, where’s convenient villain stupidity when you need it? Or a handy hacker sidekick? Barnes, you knew how to get here. Do _you_ know the password?”

“Of course I do. Doesn’t every evil conspiracy let their brainwashed attack human mess around on their computers? HYDRA made me fill in when their usual tech support people had the flu.” Barnes calms down and adds, more seriously. “It had ten letters. I remember that much. Ten clicks.”

Well, that’s something. I try hail_hydra. No luck. h@i1_hydr@? Nope. “Please tell me this damn thing isn’t case sensitive!” h411_hydr4? Nope, and now the login screen’s locked me out. “Fuck. My. Life.”

Barnes looks over my shoulder at the computer and starts gathering his weapons. “We need to go.”

“What? Did I trip up the hacker alarm and now it’s gonna explode or something?”

“No, but if HYDRA still has anyone monitoring this place, they’ll notice ‘suspicious activity.’”

“So they’ll send in the nearest goon squad?” That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. “I could use the exercise.”

“Or they’ll seal the exits, flood this place with sedative gas, and send the goon squad to pick us up for interrogation while we’re out cold,” Barnes says.

“Damn, that’s cold. _Vámonos_!” I tuck the jewels and Krugerrands in my pouches and grab the weird little pistol, and we hustle on out of there before the base’s dormant security system starts getting any funny ideas.

“You got a car, Barnes?” I ask him once we’re outside.

“Yeah, but I’ll need to ditch it soon.”

“James Buchanan Barnes, have you been stealing cars?” He nods, unabashed. “What would Captain America think?”

“My memory’s a little fuzzy,” Barnes says, “but I think I remember stealing a car in Nazi Germany with the Howling Commandos. He didn’t mind then.”

We never learned _that_ in history class. “Okay, buddy, I got a couple questions for you. One, do you have plans for dinner besides hunkering down somewhere with a protein bar and brooding, and two, are the cops in Tacoma currently after you for anything? Because I hate dining out by myself - the waiters always look at you weird when they think you’re talking to the air - and I know this great Mexican place with dim lighting and cheap margaritas.”

Barnes looks uncomfortable. “Food is… problematic.”

“But you can eat people food, right? You don’t have to live on HYDRA super soldier chow because they did some weird shit to your digestive system?”

“I can eat.”

I bet he can. The guy’s got really pretty lips under the hobo-beard. “Great! Now get your civvies so we can leave this dump ASAP. We do not want to get stuck on the highway during rush hour.” I make shooing motions but he just stands there and stares at me looking troubled. “What?”

“I don’t have a tie. Or a jacket. Will that be a problem?”

Man’s recovering from a seventy-year bout of amnesia and he remembers 1930s fashion etiquette of all things. The human brain is _weird_. “We ain’t dining at the Ritz, big guy. Comb your hair and put on a shirt with no holes in it and you’ll be _fine_.” Barnes nods seriously and stalks off, presumably to retrieve his good “pretending I’m not one of the most dangerous people on the planet, nothing to see here” clothes. Which leaves me to duck into my car for my civvies. Shit. It’s moment of truth time.

Turns out that if you’re trying to blend in with a civilian population, even my _unfortunate_ skin condition is less conspicuous than a full red and black face mask. If people don’t have to look at all of my face at once they think I just have really bad lupus or something. Headscarves and big Jackie O sunglasses are a girl’s best friends here. Sometimes bartenders look at you funny if you’re a girl in a scarf knocking back shots of Patrón, but that’s the price you pay for not scaring the horses. What if Barnes decides that he’d rather not enjoy his fajitas with a side of overripe avocado and murderstruts off into the night? I’m starting to like the guy. Or what if he’s okay with my face but he’s a GIANT RACIST because he’s a white man from the forties who spent the Civil Rights Movement years having his brain scrambled by Nazis? “C’mon Wanda,” I tell myself. “You can do this. Vanessa took you back, and you don’t even want Barnes to have sex with you! Okay, maybe you do a little. But that’s not the point.” So I put my non-murdering clothes on and put away my unconcealable weapons and get out to face the music.

Barnes cleans up pretty good. With his hair tied back and his arm covered up he looks less like a hobo assassin and more like a liberal arts university grad student who moonlights as a personal trainer. And I look like… me.

To give the guy credit, he doesn’t flinch. “ _Magical Pony Adventures_?” he says, when he sees my shirt. “Isn’t that for little girls?”

“Excuse you! It’s a modern classic.” So he’s gonna be a gentleman and not make personal remarks. God, I know so few polite people I’d almost forgotten they exist. But I can’t just spend all evening waiting for the elephant to drop. Wait. That can’t be right. “Y’know, when I saw _The Phantom Of The Opera_ the first time I thought, ‘bro, the rest of you’s hot. Just keep your mask on. Women love that kinky shit!’ But it’s different when it’s your own gruesome disfigurement.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Barnes says.

“Who?”

“Red Skull. At least you have a nose.”

“Congratulations, I’m officially prettier than at least one Nazi mad scientist! Go me!”

“Sorry, Miss Pool. I’m kinda out of practice at the whole charm thing.”

“Eh, you’re better than most of the assholes I hang out with,” I tell him as I walk back to my car. “Get in, loser!” 

Barnes tosses his backpack and his duffel bag of totally-not-weapons in the back seat - man, why don’t hitmen carry instrument cases anymore? So much classier - and circles my car checking for trackers on the bumper or bugs in the overhead compartments before he sits down. He relaxes a little once we’re on the road and the car hasn’t blown up or been attacked by HYDRA goons disguised as state troopers, but he still looks uneasy. 

As we pull into the restaurant’s parking lot, he turns to me seriously and asks, “Okay, who do you want me to kill?”

“Barnes, if I needed someone dead and didn’t want to do it myself I’m sure you’d do a bang-up job, and we’ll probably make a great team-up someday when the writer runs out of other ideas, but that’s not why I asked you here.”

Barnes gives me a “that sounds fake, but okay” look that would do a snarky teenage girl proud, but he doesn’t press the issue.

We get to the restaurant before the dinner rush, which is a damn good thing because Barnes is like, Princess and the Pea-level picky when it comes to seating arrangements. I just whisper “He’s a vet” at the hostess and she nods sympathetically and lets Barnes stalk around the dining room looking for a table for two with acceptable cover and sight lines. Barnes finally finds a table he can put up with and we get to sit down, and then he takes one look at the menu and says “I have no idea what most of these things are.”

“Didn’t you go on any missions in Latin America?”

“I did, but they didn’t exactly take me out to dinner afterwards.”

“What a bunch of ungrateful dicks. No wonder you left.”

Barnes eventually finds something he thinks his poor freezer burned white boy digestion can tolerate, and we order. While we wait for our food, I tell him about the job that officially brought me to Washington. 

“You ever have someone give you the ‘good deeds should be their own reward’ spiel, Barnes?”

“All the damn time,” Barnes says. “As I said, HYDRA wouldn’t even take me out to dinner when I did a good job killing someone, let alone pay me. All I got were pep talks.”

“But you wouldn’t think people would try to pull that kind of crap on a _mercenary_ , would you? Being in it for the money is kind of inherent in the concept. It’d be like a client expecting my girlfriend to give him a discount because he was just that sexually frustrated.” Barnes says nothing, but looks at me solemnly and nods.

“So a bunch of college kids running their own wannabe Hatewatch found out that the leader of the local I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Klan got his hands on some HYDRA doohickies because the dumbass posted pictures online, and they wanted me to steal them before they could be used in some superpowered hate crime. I don’t know why they couldn’t have just called the cops on him, but a job’s a job, and stealing artifacts from purple-hooded Klansman ripoffs might be the closest I ever get to being like Captain America. I even gave them a discount because it was for a good cause.”

“But when the job was done the kids came up a hundred dollars short even with the discount. Okay, they’re young and have crummy jobs and aren’t used to the whole fiscal responsibility thing yet. Stuff happens. I was prepared to be reasonable and make some kind of arrangement. So the kids were standing there looking all awkward and ‘please don’t cut off our fingers, Ms. Deadpool, ma’am, we need them for typing our term papers,’ and I was wondering if I’d have to settle for making up the difference in weed, cheap vodka, and Adventure Time box sets, when one little dweeb decided to brazen it out. He got all up in my face and started lecturing me about how it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight oppression like some cut-rate Captain America with an undercut.” 

“Steve doesn’t stiff people,” Barnes says with quiet certainty.

Right, this is _the_ James Buchanan Barnes, he knows what he’s talking about. “Now if a grownass adult had tried to pull this kind of thing, I would have felt justified in stabbing them a little, but everyone’s a little shit when they’re nineteen. So I was inclined to go easy on him. Guess who’s getting a fine selection of Chick Tracts and hemorrhoid relief products delivered to his dorm room in three to seven business days?” Barnes smiles faintly at that, and then our food arrives.

We eat quietly for a few minutes before Barnes looks up from his caldo de pollo and asks “You said you didn’t want me to kill anyone for you. What _do_ you want? Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because, one, I’m a sucker for your manly charms, Barnes. Two, Captain America was one of my childhood heroes and if I was mean to you in your hour of need I know he would be Very Disappointed. Three, I’m a big believer in former test subject/killing machine solidarity. And four, my life’s actually going kind of right for once and when you’re happy, you want to, y’know, share it and spread it around. Damn, that makes happiness sound like an STD…” 

“ _Bucky Barnes_ was Steve’s best friend,” Barnes says. Okay? Nice to know all the brainwashing hasn’t erased his ability to remember his own origin story. “But I don’t know if I can be him anymore. Bucky died in a HYDRA lab. I’m just a ghost using his body.” 

“I hope you were being metaphorical, Barnes, because I’m pretty sure you aren’t undead.” I poke his right hand to make sure. Yep, that’s living flesh all right! “Is that why you’re running around breaking into old HYDRA bases in the middle of nowhere?”

“I have to take out as much of HYDRA as I can. I can’t risk letting them go after me. Or Steve.”

Sure, Jan. “And you can’t tell Steve about it and maybe get some backup that isn’t strange women dropping from the ceiling because…?” Barnes makes a Grumpy Cat face at me and goes back to his soup. I get to work dismembering an enchilada. The chef here uses lots of cheese, which is as it should be, but it makes them more work to eat.

Finally Barnes turns to me and says, “Steve wants his friend back. The old Bucky. Not whoever I am now. It’s better if I stay away.”

“Bull. Shit. Been there, done that, Vanessa was not happy. If Steve loves you half as much as all the books and museum displays and homoerotic movie adaptations say, he would much rather deal with your crazy than be on the other side of the country wondering where you are and whether you’re alive or dead.” Barnes looks sceptical, but like he wants to believe me. “And if you do have trouble working things out, kidnap him and take him on a road trip!”

“What.”

“You could both use a vacation. He’ll get some time off from his responsibilities as Captain America, and you’ll get a chance to travel to new places, meet exotic people, and _not_ kill them unless you really want to. Nothing like wide open spaces and a pinch of Stockholm Syndrome to put the sizzle back in your bromance.”

“Is that what you did? With Vanessa.”

“Nah, we just had a boring adult conversation and then marathon makeup sex.”

“Too much touching.” Bucky makes a face like he puts “excessive physical contact” up there with dentist appointments and kale-spirulina cleanses. What did they do to the poor bastard?

Just then a nervous-looking young blonde woman comes up to our table. She’s wearing conservative, feminine clothes that make her look like a Mormon missionary and she walks like a ballet dancer. “Excuse me?” she says to me. “I lost my wallet and I was here for lunch, I think it might have fallen out when I left my purse under the table. Would you mind checking for it? It’s pink with cartoon spiders on it.”

“We haven’t seen anything like that here, miss,” Barnes says. The girl looks intently at his face and smiles a little. Well, he is pretty cute. 

Then she turns to me. “Would you mind checking again? I’m afraid it might have fallen under something.” Her tone is polite and all, but there’s something about her that says “if you don’t help me look for my damn wallet I will stand here staring at you all evening if I have to.” So I duck under the table and start checking all the shadowy corners. No wallet. As soon as I’m down there, she moves in closer and starts talking to Barnes. She’s leaning all up in his personal space, and he’s so uncomfortable I can see the tension in his lower legs and feet. Then she leans closer and says “Sputnik,” and Barnes spasms a little and goes eerily still. Then she starts whispering to him. My Russian’s a little rusty, but I think she says something like “You’ve been away for too long, soldier. We missed you.” 

Whatever the hell she intends for Barnes, it can’t be good. I somersault out from under the table, head-butting her in the knee on the way, she draws a knife from an honest-to-god garter sheath, and we’re off to the races. 

She’s taller than me, but the restaurant is crowded enough that it’s not an advantage. She has her knife and zappy-disks, I have a fork and a chip basket. (Those things are surprisingly good for catching knife blades.) Okay, technically, I have a pistol too, but I really like this restaurant, and I don’t think they’d let me come back if I started a shootout in the dining room. We both get some good hits in, but a good hit from a normal human doesn’t do much to me, and this chick has crazy pain tolerance. Maybe it’s a Russian thing. Anyway, the result is that we wind up chasing each other around the dining room like a couple of Looney Tunes characters and parkouring off the empty tables for way too long. It’s great.

“ _Anything you can do, I can do better_ ,” I sing, as I dodge one of her fancy ballet-fu kicks and retaliate with a punch in the solar plexus. “ _I can do anything better than you_.” She retaliates by pulling her knife free and trying to stab me with it. She grazes my shoulder, but does not join in with “ _No you can’t_.” 

“C’mon, girl. That was your cue! Work with me here.” She just stubbornly continues trying to beat me up with no witty banter or musical accompaniment. Some people have no idea how to behave. We’re at the end of the dining room near the bar, now, where the terrain’s a little more open and Miss Probably-A-Baby-Black-Widow’s long legs and ninja ballet give her more of an advantage. And I gotta admit, she is really damn graceful. “C’mon, girl. _Any wall you can jump, I can jump higher, I can jump any wall higher than you. No you can’t! Yes I can!_ ”

“Don’t you ever shut up?” she growls at me as she makes a beautiful leap, forgets that the arch of the doorway separating the dining room from the bar is several inches lower than the rest of the ceiling, and clocks herself on the forehead. For a few precious seconds she just stands there stunned, dusting herself off and glaring up at the doorway, and that is when I hit her over the head with a plate. That seems to knock her out, but she’s still breathing, so I pat her down for weapons and then get out the zip ties. A waitress - our waitress - comes over to investigate, curious but not alarmed.

“I hope you’re not trying to kidnap her,” she says. “That’s against restaurant policy.”

“I’m not,” I say honestly. “Just defending myself. But if you call the cops or the paramedics, please tell them that she is a highly trained unarmed combatant so they should be careful. And if you call the police could you please leave Jim out of it?” I lower my voice a few notches. “He’s a former P.O.W. and I don’t think he’d do very well in anything that felt like an interrogation.” She nods sympathetically. “Oh, and how much for the broken dish?” Look at me now, everyone who ever said I lacked social skills!

“I’ll ask the manager.”

“That’ll be great, just put it on the bill.”

The waitress walks off to do whatever it is responsible service professionals do after superhero fights break out in their workplace, and Baby Black Widow is beginning to wake up. I lean closer and tell her “Word to the wise, itsy bitsy spider. If you’re going to ambush someone at dinner, wait for dessert. People who are really full and halfway to a carb coma move a lot more slowly.” She groans at me, tries to headbutt me in the face, misses, and flinches from the pain. 

When I get back to our table, Barnes is looking pale - even for him - and shaky, but not all brainwashed around the edges. “I think those command words used to work better on me,” he says.

“And I think you look like a man who needs a drink. You ever had tequila, Barnes?” He shakes his head, and the next time a server comes through I order two well margaritas and ask to see the dessert menu.

“Sorry for ruining your dinner,” Barnes says.

“Hey, I’m supposed to be apologizing, I’m the Canadian here. Enough of your cultural appropriation! But seriously, it’s not your fault that the Itsy Bitsy Spider has no manners.”

“Ever since I got out I’ve been so worried about American HYDRA coming after me,” Barnes says thoughtfully. “I never thought the Russians would try to get me back. Damn. Now I have twice as much to worry about.”

“Good thing you don’t actually have to take them all on by yourself, you idiot,” I say. Barnes makes an annoyed face. “Talk to Steve.”

Barnes looks all angsty yet grim and determined at me, like vintage-handsome hobo Batman. “I can’t. You saw what happened! I still have _stuff_ in my head. I’m not safe.”

“At least call him. Write him a letter, send him a postcard, follow him on twitter, drop creepy love notes down his chimney, _something_. I’m serious.”

“You’re not going to let this thing go, are you?”

“Nope!” I say cheerfully. “I’m a romantic.”

“I’ll think about it,” Barnes says. Our drinks arrive at this point, so I stop bugging Barnes for a moment to concentrate on the pure beauty of introducing a World War II veteran to tequila.

It’s been a pretty good day.

**Author's Note:**

> ROUS are Rodents of Unusual Size, from "The Princess Bride."  
> Fernet-Branca is a strong bitter-herbal cult classic liqueur which is considered an acquired taste even among people who like it.


End file.
